One of the most significant movements that affect our everyday lives as Dartmouth students can be seen in such a common place as Baker-Berry Library. The vast majority of the people on campus know when rush hours are at the library. Depending on the taste and preferences of the library’s patrons, many students structure their study patterns, habits and spots according to the movement of people.

Long gone are the days of struggling to pick your Top Eight friends on Myspace, engaging in poke wars via Facebook and chatting with your friends on AIM while your parents aren’t using the shared family computer. While social media may have drastically evolved, its prominence in everyday life has only increased. We are constantly connected, engaged in a continuous cycle of posting, reposting, updating, liking and commenting. We feel inclined to update our followers every time we go to Starbucks, visit that trendy brunch spot in the city, walk past a particularly striking tree or go to a concert.

Gender. Some of us think about it more than others — one may happen to notice this particular aspect of one’s identity more in certain situations, such as walking home at night in the city. For some, gender identity does not factor into one’s daily, conscious decisions such as what to wear or how to act around others, but the reality is that gender is often at the forefront of many of our minds.

Before Dartmouth went coeducational in the 1970s, there weren’t as many college-aged women in the Hanover area. Dartmouth men needed a way to find dates, and one solution was to invite young women to attend the annual Winter Carnival.

In the wake of the polarizing confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court following multiple credible allegations of sexual misconduct, this week’s Mirror theme of gender falls at an tremendously relevant time. Many students and faculty were largely disappointed, creating increased urgency for continued campus discussions around sexual assault and the proper treatment of survivors and accused alike. According to a poll of Dartmouth’s campus by the website College Pulse, 68.9 percent of student respondents believe Kavanaugh should not have been confirmed. For national context, a recent Washington Post poll found that 51 percent of those surveyed disapproved of Kavanaugh’s Senate confirmation, compared to 41 percent who approved. Rather unsurprisingly, a miniscule percent of women at Dartmouth supported confirmation (4.5 percent), while the number of men supporting the confirmation was almost five times that of women at 19.8 percent. Nonetheless, more than half of men opposed confirmation, and around a quarter responded “not sure.”

Last winter, I took a biology class with a lab counterpart that was entirely dissection-based. Though the subject matter of the class was extremely fascinating, with every incision and extraction I performed, I realized that I did not have the passion necessary to continue the infamous pre-med track that I, like many of my peers, entered college intending to pursue.

Popularized perceptions of college life cast a narrow view of sexuality in which men hit on women at drunken frat parties, leading to one-night stands with no strings attached. How accurate is this portrayal when it comes to Dartmouth’s hookup culture, and who participates in it?

Sprawled across her sofa bed with our computers perched on our stomachs, my friend Sophia and I were tackling the study guide for our biology final. While racking my brain to remember all the processes of cellular respiration, I heard a faint humming beside me. The soft sounds grew louder and louder, and before I knew it, Sophia and I were belting out the lyrics to “Pumpin’ Blood” by NONONO. Completing the first verse, we rounded on the chorus. Sophia began to shout, “THIS IS YOUR HEART, IT’S ALIVE, IT’S PUMPKIN BLOOD!”

Think about the t-shirts you own. How many did you actually buy? It’s almost impossible to resist the allure of free stuff, so swag from clubs, events, internships, Greek life and more is bound to accumulate in one’s closet. However, despite these goods being free, they come at a significant cost, both socioeconomic and environmental. Fast fashion refers to the culture of consuming large quantities of cheap goods, and usually only wearing them a few times.

This summer, I traded my bathing suits and flip flops for business casual blazers and flats. Late nights filled with Netflix binge-watching soon turned into early mornings packed with coffee, subway stops, crowded New York streets and even more coffee. Internship season had officially started, and I struggled to adjust to the fast-paced city lifestyle. Although my quiet, suburban hometown was located only 45 miles north of the Manhattan metropolis, it felt like the two places were in separate worlds.

This summer, a soon-to-be Dartmouth freshman texted me asking whether she should buy any articles of clothing in particular in preparation for her transition from our hometown of Lexington, Kentucky to the cold north. I replied with an emphatic no, reassuring her, “Dartmouth is the best because really and truly no one cares what you wear … I think anything that you buy will totally fly.”

Do you ever find yourself using your phone when walking to class to avoid making eye contact with the girl you met to last week, because you don’t know whether she will say ‘hi’ or not? This might be unintentional ghosting. Ghosting can be best defined as the act of actively or passively avoiding communication with someone without being specific about your intentions for the future of the certain relationship.

A month ago, I would have been sorely underqualified to write about silence, the theme of this week’s issue. I grew up in downtown Chicago, where silence is an ever-allusive myth. Though I thought of Hanover as a quieter lifestyle than Chicago, I’d interpreted that in the context of its simplicity, rather than the noise level. I should have known better, with Dartmouth’s the motto being “Vox Clamantis in Deserto.” Though “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness” describes some less outdoorsy freshmen on their First-Year Trips, it also portrays a certain degree of solitude; there is no background noise to life in the Upper Valley. In the pandemonium of Trips and the hecticness of orientation, I didn’t even notice the difference in noise levels between home and Hanover. As the storm has settled, and I’ve stared to adjust to my new home, silence creeps up on me at strange times. I’ve come to respect the profound impact of silence, especially on someone unaccustomed to it.

Our campus, though nestled in the white mountains of New Hampshire, hours away from the hustle and bustle of city life, is a thriving and pulsing center. We may be secluded from the noise of any city, unlike many of our Ivy League counterparts, but we make enough noise of our own. But what happens when there’s no noise at all?